5 controversial romance novels that changed the course of history

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Extramarital affairs usually affect families, relationships, friendships, and sometimes even affect careers. But history… It was not often, but as these five examples show, adultery sometimes had such serious consequences that not only the fate of people changed, but also the course of history.

1. Paris and Elena Troyanskaya

The earliest written work in Western civilization, the story of Helen of Troy, told in Homer's Iliad, is a Greek heroic legend that combines fact and fiction that has inspired writers and artists for centuries. Known as “the person who launched a thousand ships,” Elena Troyanskaya is considered one of the most beautiful women in all of literature. She was married to Menelaus, king of Sparta. Paris, the son of King Priam of Trojan, arriving in Sparta and seeing Helen, fell in love with the girl at first sight. Obsessed with his love, he decided at all costs to get the desired woman into his own hands, simply kidnapping her and taking her to Troy, thereby initiating the Trojan War.

In response to the daring act of the young Trojan, the Greeks gathered a huge army, led by Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon, to reclaim Helen. And then an armada of a thousand Greek ships crossed the Aegean Sea, heading for Troy. For nine years the city remained impregnable until the Greeks built a large hollow wooden horse with warriors hidden inside. Despite warnings to “beware of the Greeks bringing gifts,” the Trojans accepted the horse and led it inside the city walls. On the same night, the soldiers "got out of the horse" and opened the city gates to admit the Greek army. Troy was destroyed, and Elena returned safely to Sparta, where she happily lived with Menelaus for the rest of her life.

2. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

The love story of Anna and Henry is a flesh-and-blood tale of feelings, loss and betrayal. Their romance was so passionate that it changed the course of English history. Anna first joined the English court in 1522 on her return from France. It was four years before Heinrich noticed her among other women, in part because he was having an affair with her older sister Maria. But when Heinrich saw Anna, he fell deeply in love and pursued her for more than a year before she reciprocated. But Anne, intelligent and ambitious, did not want to be content with the status of a mistress, like her sister. In the bedroom, she kept Henry at arm's length for as long as possible. And Heinrich, who desperately needed a legitimate male heir, obeyed, agreeing to divorce with Catherine. It took years. But the king and Boleyn were so passionate about each other that by 1533 Anne was pregnant, and Henry went to great lengths to get rid of Catherine and make Anne his new queen. Unable to convince the Pope to invalidate his marriage, Henry broke with the Holy Roman Church, brought about the Reformation and proclaimed himself head of the Anglican Church. Henry changed the faith of his country for the sake of the woman he loved, but this decision haunted him for all the following years.

If the love story of Heinrich and Anna began with intense passion and self-sacrifice, then the honeymoon ended dramatically. When he was forty-four years old, Heinrich got into a fight, as a result of which one of his legs was injured. Unable to play sports, he gained weight. Poor circulation led to leg ulcers that worried him for the rest of his life. After the fall, Heinrich lost consciousness for two hours, leading to speculation that he suffered a head injury that irrevocably changed his personality. Almost immediately after this incident, he turned his back on Anna, and a series of further unpleasant events led to the fact that she had a miscarriage. The child was a boy, and Henry saw in this proof that his union with Anna was cursed.

Despite the fact that in his love letters to Anna he swore that he would never look at another, his once passionate love for a woman, for whom he once turned heaven and earth, overnight turned into hatred. A famous womanizer, Heinrich didn't really need an excuse to go astray, but Anne's accident and Anne's inability to give birth to his son spurred him on. Jane Seymour, the maid of honor and, like in a real soap opera, Anna's cousin, was his new conquest. Historical evidence suggests that Anne physically assaulted Jane on more than one occasion when she tried to take her man away.

Maybe Heinrich really was in love with Jane, or maybe he wanted a male heir so badly that he could not think clearly. But what would it look like to England and the world if he divorced Anna, the woman who caused all this fuss? A different solution was required. Henry turned to his trusted advisor, Thomas Cromwell, to secure his freedom.

On May 2, 1536, Anna was taken to the Tower of London, where she was accused of adultery and incest. Whether Anna is guilty or not remains a subject of historical debate, but what is important is that she appeared so because she was a cocky and outspoken woman who could not be kept in a golden cage. She was executed two days after five men - including her brother George - accused her of having an affair. It was the sudden and tragic end of a love that seemed boundless at first.

3. Catherine the Great and Grigory Potemkin

Of all the great historical novels, few can compare with the love story of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin. Formally, Catherine was not married when she began an affair with Potemkin (her husband, Peter III, was killed as a result of a political coup that she organized). Their turbulent and complex relationship shocked their contemporaries and continue to intrigue even centuries later. Lovers, companions and, most likely, husband and wife, Ekaterina and Potemkin were also close political partners, and for some time Potemkin served as Catherine's de facto co-ruler in the Russian Empire. Their letters provide an intimate look at the careless moments of lovers, revealing both ecstatic expressions of love and candid views of 17th century politics.

In February 1774, the Russian empress mistook Grigory Potemkin for her lover and is now believed to have secretly married him a few months later. Especially in the first two years of their relationship, Catherine was consumed by her passion for Gregory. Hundreds of letters and notes that she threw to him between dates in the Winter Palace testify to the dizzying abundance of new love that so completely seized her.

From Potemkin's letter to Catherine, written during the struggle against the Turks in 1769, and ending with a farewell note written the day before his death in 1791, the correspondence covers most of Catherine's reign. Letters are personal and political, private and public at the same time. Many of Catherine's love letters to Gregory, written during their stormy romance, reveal the empress's passionate nature. Potemkin's letters provide a rare glimpse of his arrogant and fickle nature, while at the same time serving to debunk the myth of him as nothing more than a venal sycophant.

Their romance explores the complexity of personal relationships in light of dramatic changes in state and military affairs. After their love cooled down, the Empress and Potemkin continued to discuss in their letters a wide range of state affairs, including the annexation of Crimea, court politics, wars against the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, and the colonization of southern Russia. Together, they carried out the most dramatic territorial expansion in the history of Imperial Russia, transforming Catherine into a powerful world leader and creating a bond of affection that will never completely disappear.

4. Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan

By 1857, when Charles Dickens met the young actress Ellen Ternan, he was one of England's most famous people for the past two decades.

To the legions of his fans who devoured the bestselling series of novels such as The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol, Dickens seemed like a typical Victorian family man. Born into poverty, he rose through hard work and lived up to his proclaimed ideals of home comfort and moral purity with his wife, Catherine, and their children.

But the truth, as always, turned out to be more complicated. In less than a year, Dickens' infatuation with eighteen-year-old Ternan, known as Nelly, will lead to a disorderly breakup in his marriage and start a relationship that will last the rest of his life.

Nelly played since childhood, but always in the shadow of her older sister Fanny, who was considered a child prodigy. In her book The Invisible Woman, Claire Tomalin described the blonde blue-eyed Nellie as she was at the time, just a few months before meeting Dickens:.

By the mid-1850s, Dickens, judging by his letters, was already unhappy in his marriage. After he first met Nelly, the relationship between Dickens and Katherine quickly deteriorated. They separated in May 1858 and Catherine moved in. Dickens even used his paternal sole custody rights to cut off contact between her and their younger children. Catherine's younger sister Georgina Hogarth, who lived with her family for a long time, sided with Dickens, claiming that Catherine neglected her own children.

When rumors spread that Dickens had left his wife for a younger woman, the novelist tried to justify himself somehow. - wrote Charles in a statement published in The Times.

Much of the gossip surrounding his family drama soon died down, thanks to Dickens' determined efforts to hide Nelly's growing importance in his life. In 1859, she moved into a London townhouse, bought in the name of her sisters, presumably by Dickens. Nelly soon abandoned her acting career and remained largely isolated, apart from her mother and sisters, throughout her relationship with Dickens.

When Dickens continued his prolific writing career in the 1860s, including his novels A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, Nelly almost disappeared from view for several years. According to Claire, evidence suggests that she lived in France during this period and may have even given birth to a child from about 1862 to 1863, who died in infancy. When she returned to England after 1865, Dickens settled Nellie in Slough., a town near London, visiting her there from time to time between work. Despite the uneasy relationship between the young girl and the famous writer, the two continued to stay together until Dickens died in 1870 at the age of fifty-eight.

5. Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley

He was expelled from Oxford, and soon he grew tired of his wife Harriet Westbrook, who only a year ago was the most passionate love in his life, but now he is bored to death. He accused her of marrying him for money, and abandoned her and their daughter Elizabeth Ianta (born June 1813) before their second child was born. So Percy sought a more intellectual sorority and on 5 May 1814 he visited Godwin's bookstore in London's East End, hoping to meet Mary, whom he had previously heard of but had never seen. Despite the fact that from an early age Mary was familiar with many philosophers and writers of that time through her father, nevertheless, one passionate, eloquent and rebellious young poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley attracted her attention from the very first minutes.

Percy's affection for Mary blossomed daily, and he generously gave her attention, glad that he had finally found a woman equal to him in intelligence. They soon began meeting in secret at Mary Wollstonecraft's grave in St. Pancras Cemetery. On June 26, 1814, Mary declared her love for Percy Shelley at her mother's grave, under the stars. The tombs sparkling in the moonlight testified to the caresses that the lovers whispered in the night.

At that time, Mary was almost seventeen, and Percy was almost twenty-two. William Godwin disapproved of their relationship, and Mary was confused. She could not understand her father's concerns, because she saw in Percy and their love affair the embodiment of the liberal ideas of her parents in the 1790s. Despite the fact that Mary was a good daughter, she rebelled against her father's advice, continuing the love affair with the man she loved.

On July 28, 1814, the couple fled to France, taking with them Claire Clermont, Mary's half-sister. While traveling, the three entertained themselves with reading, mainly of Shakespeare, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft. They also kept a joint diary and continued to write their own works. Traveling on a donkey, mule, carriage and on foot through France, recently devastated by the war at that time, brought them to Switzerland. In 1815, Mary faced the loss of her first child, a girl named Clara, who died thirteen days after birth. In May 1816, Mary, Percy and their son William, born the same year, traveled to Geneva, where they spent the infamous "summer without sun" in the company of Lord Byron, Claire Claremont, and John William Polidori, Byron's physician.

In 1818, the couple went to Italy with no intention of returning. Once there, they never stayed in one place for long. Time was spent socializing, writing, reading, learning and sightseeing. However, their "Italian adventure" was overshadowed by personal tragedies and betrayals. Mary, who inherited her mother's melancholic trait, became depressed and withdrawn after the loss of her children, William and Clara. Percy sought his fortune outside the family, and in December 1818, Shelley had a daughter by an unmarried woman.

The years spent in Italy were the most creative and intellectually active period in their lives. In the summer of 1822, the couple moved to the secluded Villa Magni, located in San Terenzo in the Gulf of Lerici. On July 8 of the same year, a sad event happened again in Mary's life - Percy drowned while returning from Livorno to Lerici after meeting with Lee Hunt and discussing their new print magazine Liberal. Mary devoted the rest of her life to ensure that Shelley's poems did not sink into oblivion.

Continuing the theme - from which you want to cry, smile and laugh.